Some Musical Stuff

First of all, a concert:

I will be playing a solo show on March 13th, in Pilton, Barnstable in Devon.

The show will be in Pilton Hall, details here...

www.myspace.com/willburnssongs

www.myspace.com/treecreepermusic

Secondly, here is a link to a Radio session Adam and I did before Christmas while up north recording our new record. That's Adam that say's "That was wicked, wasn't it?" , not me. Just want to clear that up...

http://www.elfm.co.uk/post/2009/11/cannonball-radio-2/


The new Treecreeper album is all done, and there should be some news on what will happen to it next shortly. But it's good, apart from my singing, obviously, and will be called Juniper.

I Hate Nicky Campbell (and other things)

Two days ago, driving into London, listening to the radio, the BBC no less, and the phone-in was about the news that Sarkozy and the French government want to ban the wearing of the niqab. How I feel about that is one thing, and maybe I will come to it, but of more immediate annoyance was the stupidity with which this BBC radio phone-in was handled. I honestly could not believe what I was hearing. They only had Muslim people on defending the wearing of the niqab, and while I was listening, only men as well. Maybe no women called about it, but I just can't believe that such a coincidental affirmation of "our" media's current agenda actually occurred. That fucking toad Nicky Campbell would have been rubbing his hands together with glee if so.

This wasn't my real issue, though. My main problem is just the casual acceptance that all this discussion of Islam is somehow acceptable because of the terrorist attacks in the last few years. Nicky Campbell practically asserted this view. He is paid by us, and he is espousing this view that ever since 9/11 every aspect of Islamic culture is now up for debate and scrutiny. It's bullshit. The two things are not related... I mean, when I was younger, people weren't discussing whether certain Catholic practices should be banned because of the threat of the IRA. Catholicism wasn't constantly being discussed as this "otherness" that was an inherent, insidious threat to British culture. If the IRA can be distinguished from Catholicism as a whole, why does our media insist on perpetrating this drip feed that Islam and terrorism go hand in hand. They are doing the same with Islam and the oppression of women. Who is complaining about Nun's habits? Not Sarkozy, that's for sure. And not Nicky Campbell.
Am I just so naive as to want a media that doesn't push a racist, jingoistic pro Judeo-Christian agenda? Is that too much to ask for, especially from an organization that we all pay for, whatever our religion? Fucking religion. Fucking BBC. Fucking Nicky fucking Campbell. Fuck... (walks off kicking stones)

Elvis (a bit late)

I have this theory. It's not absolutely thought through, but here it is anyway; I reckon that every boy brought up in the West has this deep-seated sense of melancholy, a small kernel of sadness that no-one can quite figure out where it came from. This begins sometime around the start of puberty, and can be a very real, conscious strickening of the spirit, or it can be a ghostly pervasive blues that you don't even notice. But it's there in all of us, and it comes about because one day, and you can either realize this consciously or it can slip into your psyche unchecked, but one day we all come to the realization that we are never, ever going to be Elvis Presley. Some try, like Gram. But it can't be. He nailed it. And it will never be the same again.

Another Saturday Night...

Another Saturday Night

We are dressed and
in the front room
waiting for the cab.
Time yet for anything
at all to happen.
Living this way
I feel everything
could just fall apart
at any moment.
You
start unzipping your dress.

A Bad Day

... was only made worse by watching Paul Collingwood's cringe-worthy interviews. His ridiculous insistence on beginning every sentence with "Look..." or "Listen..." a la Michael Clarke (and the rest) is horrific . He must be far too old to be picking up Antipodean vernacular habits like some idiotic gap year student... "eh"?

The Next Decade

I normally hate the segmentation of cultural life into arbitrary compartments like decades but the ten years just gone, I will never call it that name, really felt like a time when I was attached in a big way to a certain few sports people. I guess I was the same age as them, and they came through while I was watching and reading about them, while the players that have taken their places just seem like they don't belong to me in quite the same way. They seem like kids, their clothes make no sense to me, and their haircuts look alien. I bet the music they listen to will just seem like noise to me. Will I ever feel like I did about Steve Harmison, or Thierry Henry again?
There were people before them, of course, people like Dennis Bergkamp, Paul Merson, Courtney Walsh and Wasim Akram, but they were men as I was a boy and they seemed magical and other-worldly. Now my age has over-taken the people who I watch playing sport and the existential mortality that comes with that knowledge has somehow diminished my bond with them.

Whatever, here's my five men of the last decade....

Steve Harmison - Wides, homesickness, drink, more wides.
Robert Pires - Hair, chin beard, cheat, better than Henry.
Zinedine Zidane - Headbutts, red cards, and a perfect footballer.
Shoiab Akhtar - Genital warts, extreme pace, drugs, bans, the lot.
Andrew Symonds - Drink problems, loads of sixes, rows on the pitch, fights in the bar.

Here's to the next batch of troubled, angry, depressive, drunks that actually make sport worth watching.